Entr’acte
Caroline Shaw (b. 1986)

THE STORY

Few composers have had as meteoric a rise as Caroline Shaw. A native of Greenville, North Carolina, she became the youngest-ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for her seminal work, Partita for 8 Voices. Since then, she has become one of the most prominent voices of her generation, transcending genres and building collaborations with internationally renowned ensembles and artists.

One of the most striking features of Shaw’s music is her focus on timbre, the quality of musical sounds—whether they be pure or harsh, whispery or rich. This stylistic signature is especially present in Entr’acte as the composer plays with the sound quality of the string ensemble through unique methods of sound production.

Entr’acte was composed in 2011, after Shaw heard a performance of a Haydn string quartet by the Brentano Quartet and was struck by a moment in which the ensemble shifted through a transition particularly beautifully. As she described it: “I love the way some music suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.”

LISTEN FOR

• The portion of the work where the strings move their bows vertically along the strings of their instruments, from the top of the instrument to the bottom, rather than horizontally across the strings as normal, creating a brushing effect
• The variation on pizzicato when the composer instructs musicians to slide the fingers of the left hand along the fingerboard while they pluck the strings with the right hand, bending the pitch to create a distorted effect
• Harmonics in the middle section of the work creating a glassy, high-pitched sound by lightly touching the string with the left hand rather than pushing down firmly

INSTRUMENTATION

Strings